​Samsung Biologics Signs CDO Deal with Eutilex

- New Drug Development to Be Accelerated with the Partnership
- CDO Services to Be Rendered for 5 Years on up to 15 Immuno-oncology Candidate Drugs

Samsung Biologics signed on March 20 a contract development organization (CDO) agreement with Eutilex for developing cancer immunotherapy medicine. The signing ceremony was held at Conrad Hotel in Seoul's Yoido.

The partnership between Samsung Biologics, the company with the world's best CDO capabilities, and Eutilex, which holds some of the most promising drug candidates, will likely accelerate the speed of new drug development.

Under the terms of the latest agreement, Samsung Biologics will provide CDO services for five years for cell line development on up to 15 immuno-oncology candidate drugs and manufacturing of Phase I clinical trial materials.

Eutilex, a biotech R&D firm established in 2015 by Dr. Byoung S. Kwon, the world-famous immunologist, was listed on the KOSDAQ market in December last year.

The company holds a full range of pipeline drugs from antibody treatment to T cell therapy treatment and chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) t-cell therapy treatment drugs. To accelerate the pace of its commercialization efforts, it has undertaken a number of non-clinical and clinical studies concurrently. Most notably, the company possesses several "first-in-class" and "best-in-class" new antibody drug pipelines, based on its knowledge-based antibody platform.

The CDO business is a service developing new drugs under contract and typically involves producing cell lines for clients' candidate drugs under development while establishing the mass-production process and manufacturing of Phase I clinical materials.

As the number of small-sized biomedicine firms relying on contract development and manufacturing organizations (CDMOs) for their development and manufacturing needs, the CDO market has grown rapidly at an average rate of 15% a year.

Given most CDO businesses are effortlessly transitioned to future contract manufacturing organization (CMO) businesses, companies are taking CDOs more seriously.

Samsung Biologics has moved into the CDO business in earnest in 2018 and has signed six new drug development projects with domestic and international partners, gaining track records at a rapid pace.

The company has earned a high reputation for speed, price competitiveness, quality, and efficiency from customers with whom it has carried out projects.

"CDOs are important businesses for us as they can create synergies with CMO businesses. We plan on nurturing CDOs to the world-class level by taking customer's success and customer satisfaction very seriously." said Dr. Tae-han Kim, CEO at Samsung Biologics. "We will spare no effort in helping domestic bio start-ups such as Eutilex move to the global market and commercialize their products quickly."

"We have worked hard to bring our high-quality antibody pipelines up to speed to clinical phases," said Kwon of Eutilex. "With the latest signing of the CDO agreement, our non-clinical studies will gather speed and domestic launches of cancer drugs like Keytruda and Opdivo will be moved up."